Many athletes and non-athletes utilize weight lifting or weight training exercises to build muscle strength, to prevent injury, or to improve overall condition and appearance. Typically, weight training exercises are performed with either exercise machines or free weights, such as barbells with weighted plates or dumbbells.
Free weights offer certain advantages over exercise machines. For instance, they are relatively inexpensive in comparison to exercise machines. Free weights are also generally more versatile because a variety of exercises can be performed in different planes with the same set of weights, whereas exercise machines are usually designed for movements limited to a specific plane. However, the human body is by no means limited to two dimensional, planar movements. Thus, in an effort to replicate the benefits of multi-dimensional exercise activities, comprehensive exercise programs will incorporate both machines and free weights. In so doing, a variety of exercise routines are combined to work specific muscles and muscle groups in more than two dimensions for a more natural result.
Complex muscle groups act for torso movements, such as any combination of bending the chest and shoulders forward or back and twisting the torso toward either side. To varying degrees these movements twisting the torso toward either side. To varying degrees these movements involve the oblique, abdominal and erector muscles, according to the range and direction of the movement. Since these muscles must act in diverse directions, they exemplify muscle groups which cannot be fully exercised and developed by exercises confined to a single plane as in torso machines taught in prior art. While there may be floor exercises for these muscle combinations, providing useful weight resistance for such movements is awkward at best. Prior art torso exercise machines do not provide for fully bidirectional exercise of the torso muscles, therefore, the object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus for bi-directional torso exercises, where movements are not confined to a single plane.